The verbal assault, published as an open letter in Jelgava daily Zemgales Zinas on Jan. 27, emerged from resolutions passed by Staburadze, the Jelgava office of the association of politically repressed persons, the National Partisans, an organization which promotes the decolonization of Latvia and locates participants of its underground, and the National Daugavas Vanagi Union of Latvia, a social assistance organization that is comprised of veterans of the Latvian legion.
The letter writer, Ilmars Uzans, chairman of Staburadze and a member of the National Partisans, demanded a thorough investigation into the role of Jews during Latvia's "year of terror" in 1940, when the Soviet army entered the country.
"We are upset over absolutely tactless, groundless, demagogic reproaches to Latvians and this country made by the U.S. congressman Tom Lantos and also made by various Jews living in Latvia for Latvians participating in the Holocaust during WWII," wrote Uzans.
"[Alleged World War II criminal] Konrads Kalejs was selected to become the next victim by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Latvian Jews, which humiliates the Latvian nation and Latvia. Any honest person possessing at least a bit of common sense understands if the USSR and NKVD had not found any evidence of Kalejs participating in the killing of Jews, then there is no such evidence whatsoever."
Visvaldis Aivars, chair of the national association of politically repressed persons, said he only found out about the letter at a meeting on Feb. 8.
Aivars said there are 52 different chapters of his organization across Latvia. Staburadze is just one of them.
"This letter was not thought out. It's probably written in a rush," he said. "It's not balanced, and you can feel their emotions in it."
Uzans called the Simon Wiesenthal Center's statements about Kalejs a "farce," while suggesting the activities of the prosecutor general's office are "equally tragicomic."
He said the demands and questions were spurred by the re-opening of a criminal case against Kalejs based on allegations that appeared in the press.
"How many Jews in 1940 welcomed the Russian tanks with flowers and kissed them? Did they not participate in the genocide of the Latvian people in the year of terror?" he wrote.
President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, in her speech to the International Holocaust Forum, said 3,000 Jews were among those arrested, deported and executed during the Soviets' first period of occupation in 1940 to July 1941.
Nevertheless, Uzans wanted to know what Latvian Jews, the Wiesenthal Center and Lantos have done to try five specific Jews for their role in the "genocide against the Latvian nation."
He questioned the loyalty of Latvian Jews such as Mavriks Vulfsons, Members of Parliament Boris Celevics and Jakov Pliners, and Latvian Jewish community leader Grigory Krupnikov to Latvia, wondering "whom they serve, and what role they perform in relations to the existence of the Latvian people and the Latvian state?"
Krupnikov dismissed the letter, saying he refused to dignify it with a comment.
Efraim Zuroff, the Israeli director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization dedicated to tracking people who committed war crimes during World War II, was not surprised by the letter, given his previous experience in Lithuania.
As the cases of Lithuanians who allegedly committed war crimes were being discussed, he said the name of a few Jews popped up who committed crimes during the Soviet occupation.
Zuroff said if there are people who committed such crimes, then the Latvian government will deal with this evidence in a forthcoming manner, as it has already convicted a few Soviet war criminals.
"These attempts to create a historic symmetry between crimes committed by Latvians against Jews and crimes committed by Jewish communists is historically baseless and morally repugnant," he said.
Edgars Derkevics, a member of the central board of Daugavas Vanagi, completely supported Uzans's letter, because, he said, he was a student in 1941 and remembered what happened back then.
He claimed more than half of the people from the KGB, at that time, were Jewish; a similar claim was made by Harijs Mangelis, deputy chairman of the board of the National Partisans, who heard lots of stories about Jewish KGB officers.
Mangelis, who said Uzans never told him about the letter, supported its general ideas and also called for an investigation into the activities of Jews during the year of terror.
Derkevics even said he tried to write about the year of terror previously, but was rejected everywhere, except for "Latvians in Latvia", a far-right newspaper.
"The Wiesenthal Center, working day and night, has made [Latvians being guilty for killing Jews] a big, big issue," said Derkevics.
"Why do we Latvians put up with this? If nobody will do anything (to defend Latvia's reputation) then nothing will be done."
Krupnikov again dismissed this claim, citing a study by Professor Aivars Stranga that examined the background of KGB officers in 1940 which demonstrated the number of Jews who served in the KGB was proportional to the number of Jews in Latvia's population.
Zuroff, who said no one is justifying crimes against humanity for a minute, took Krupnikov's point a step further.
"Jewish communists were taking their orders from Moscow not Jerusalem. Nothing they did was out of a sense to the Jewish people," he said. "To blame the mass murder of Jews by Latvians together with Nazis on the actions of a few people who severed whatever ties they had to the Jewish people, it's a historically baseless attempt to justify the unjustifiable."
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